


Short 45 - The Stuff of Nightmares

by stgjr



Series: "The Power of a Name" Series 4 - "Time Lord Vindicant" [4]
Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street - All Media Types, Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Multi-Fandom, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Multiple Crossovers, Multiverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 02:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11705382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stgjr/pseuds/stgjr
Summary: During the post-Undertown victory/survival celebration in McAnally's, our narrator recounts the occasion he faced the nightmare being called Freddy Krueger.





	Short 45 - The Stuff of Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on October 7th, 2015.

 "No. I don't buy it. I call bullshit."  
  
I finished a swig of ale. "Oh, you doubt me, Sergeant Murphy?"  
  
"There's no way," Karrin Murphy insisted.  
  
It was getting later in the night of our post-Undertown foray gathering at McAnally's, and we were all good and inebriated to varying extents. Harry had just finished re-telling the story of the crazed sorcerer and his slime golem from a prior Undertown adventure of his, so I shared one of my more interesting confrontations.  
  
Murphy pointed a finger at me. "You expect me to believe you ran into Freddy Krueger of all things?"  
  
"Ran into. Had a nightmare with. Yes."  
  
"What was it like, Doctor?", Molly asked. She had not done so much drinking, so she was still sober enough to enjoy the stories being told. "He got into your nightmares and stuff, right?"  
  
"Oh yes. After I gave him a good bit of provocation, mind you."  
  
"This I have to hear," Harry laughed.  
  
"Well, fittingly, it starts with something I picked up from you..."  
  
  
  
  
"Are you sure this is going to work?", asked the mother of the teenage girl I was standing near.  
  
"Quite," I replied. I put the finishing touches on the chalk line, blew on it, and then pricked my finger to bleed on it. I concentrated my mind and person to imprint my willpower into the blood as it fell into the chalk. A steady thrum of energy flowed along the chalk and created an energy field around the sleeping girl. "There we are. The circle will seal her off from this entity that's been plaguing your neighborhood. Just don't disturb it."  
  
"But that's just going to work tonight, right?" Now Dad was speaking. "What about tomorrow night?"  
  
I smiled wolfishly at that. "Oh, I think I can handle that too. Now, I'm going to sack out here to keep an eye on things. Mind if I bring a cot in?"  
  
  
  
  
"Woh, hold on." Harry brought up a hand. "Go back there. Are you saying that you used a magic circle to protect this kid from Freddy?"  
  
I nodded. "Well, obviously." And then I took another drink of my fine ale.  
  
"You. Used magic." Harry shook his head. "Isn't your schtick the sci-fi stuff? You're horning in on my act now?"  
  
"Oh please, magic circles are elementary."  
  
"No quantum whatsit fields? No technobabbly solutions? I should turn you in to the union."  
  
"Ha!" I shook my head. "Hey, it worked, didn't it? That's what matters."  
  
"So, you went to sleep," Liara said. "And this entity attacked you in your sleep?"  
  
  
  
I nodded off in the cot. After a time my sleep turned into a dream. A warm grass meadow. Frolicking children in the distance. That sort of thing. I was surrounded by friends and we were all talking and laughing.  
  
And then the sky began to darken. The children stopped playing and looked on in fear.  
  
"So you're the smartass who thinks he can get in my way." The voice echoed over the hills. "No circles to protect you, smart guy."  
  
And then the pandemonium began. Fires erupting from cracked earth. The sky turned red like out of an apocalypse. And a lone figure appeared at the far end of the field. He had the hat, the sweater... and yes, the glove with knives on each finger.  
  
"Isn't this a little ostentatious for you?", I called out. "Where's the subtlety?"  
  
"Fuck subtle," Freddy Krueger spat. "You piss me off, you don't get subtle. You get your worst nightmare!"  
  
Krueger reached down and lifted up one small, struggling form. Karianas.  
  
"Kari!" Jan and Cami emerged from the smoke and flames. Jan's hand went to her lightsaber and Cami pulled that Avenger assault rifle Garrus had given her.  
  
Ordinarily a human being would fall quickly to an irate Force-practitioner with a lightsaber and a woman carrying a mass effect assault rifle. But this wasn't the real world. This was a dream realm. Freddy Krueger's playground. He faded from view just before the mass effect rounds hit. He cackled, "Over here!".  
  
Cami turned. His gloved hand reached in and gutted her. Quite viscerally, too. Not a sight for the weak of stomach.  
  
"Cami!", I shouted. I reached for my sonic disruptor, but it wasn't there. None of my gear was.  
  
He was forcing me to _watch_.  
  
Jan rushed in like an avenging angel, howling in rage. He shifted again. Kari was dropped, her neck bent impossibly from a broken neck, and the freed arm grabbed Jan and held her in place for Freddy's gloves to work their way through her throat.  
  
"Enjoying the show, jackass?!", Freddy laughed. "We've got a while to go!"  
  
  
  
  
"I think I can see where this is going," Harry sighed. "He was trying to work you up by making you watch him kill everyone, right?"  
  
"Just about."  
  
Molly visibly shuddered. "That must have sucked."  
  
"It did," I admitted. "I knew it was a dream. But he was quite atmospheric. Close enough to make me start to feel like it was real."  
  
"So, he gets in your head, gives you this nightmare, how'd you deal with it?", Murphy asked.  
  
"I'm getting to that part, Karrin." I took another drink from my bottle. "Just needed to whet my throat a bit more before I continued."  
  
  
  
  
I had to watch Freddy kill everyone. I couldn't move. I was rendered helpless, surrounded by a barrier of flame. Every Companion I'd made, every friend I'd known, butchered by the vengeful nightmare entity.  
  
You'll understand if I don't go into specifics. Let's just say he got more.. inventive after killing Jan and Cami and their daughters? Let's leave it at that.  
  
"So, here we are," Freddy announced, materializing near me. "Nobody to save you now, 'Doctor'. Nobody to do your fighting for you. It's just you and me, brainiac!"  
  
I moved and barely avoided a swipe with the gloved hand. "You just had to stick your nose in," he continued. "You thought you knew what you were picking on. Didn't think I'd get in here with you, huh?"  
  
The next blow I failed to stop. He shredded my jacket and cut into my side.  
  
  
  
  
"So, did he physically cut you?", Molly asked. "Like in the movies?"  
  
"Quantum bond. Thaumaturgy, if you want," I answered. "It's how things he does in nightmares can come to pass in the real world. So yes, I had a pretty nasty cut. But, do let me continue?"  
  
  
  
  
Anyway, he cut into my side and I fell over, bleeding and crying out. "Bastard," I declared. "You bloody, murderous bastard!"  
  
"Thanks for the compliment, 'Doctor'." Freddy backhanded me in the face and sent me spinning to the ground. I ended up on my back. He brought his foot down on my ribs. "Now, I'm going to gut you nice and slow..." He bent over and grabbed my hair to pull my head up. "But first, I'm going to slice up your pretty little face. That should be a real hoot for the girl when she gets up in the morning. Don't you think?"  
  
When he brought the gloved hand down, I caught it with my own. I strained to hold him back.  
  
"Still fighting, huh?", he rasped. "This is _my_ world, 'Doctor'. _My rules_." He pushed harder and I gave ground. "You decided to get in my way. Well, payback's a bitch, isn't it?"  
  
"So they... say."  
  
The knives inched closer to my face. And that twisted, monstrous sneer loomed ever closer into my face.  
  
  
  
  
"You obviously escaped," Katara said. "So this story isn't very scary."  
  
"Shhh!", Molly hissed. "He's getting to the good part!"  
  
  
  
  
Freddy probably realized something was wrong when I smiled.  
  
I started to push the knives away from my face. Effortlessly. Freddy put everything he had into pushing back and couldn't budge me or my hand. "What?!", he growled.  
  
"I knew it was your ego that'd bring you here," I said to him. "I knew you'd come after me. And that's what I wanted."  
  
Not only did I push his hand back, but I stood up and threw him off in the same movement. He ended up on his back in what was now the grass meadow again. The flames were gone, the sky was normal, and the charnel house he had made of those I knew was gone.  
  
"You're powerful, I grant you that," I continued. "But this is _my_ mind. And I am a _Time Lord_." When my arm came up, my sonic disruptor was in my hand. I knocked him down the hill with a solid kinetic blast. "And since you are here, Freddy Krueger, maybe you'd like to see what my nightmares are really like."  
  
Freddy was clambering back to his feet at this point. A bolt of energy slammed into the ground in front of him. He looked up to see a wave of blue helmets crest the nearest hill. An army in blue armor charged, weapons raised, and the cry of " _Sontar Ha!_ " filled the air.  
  
He began to flee. Reasonable. But everywhere he went, more of the Sontarans appeared. The fire converged on him. He cried out in shock and then fear as his escape routes were closed off.  
  
The Sontaran fire converged. He screamed as several bolts hit him and sent him to the ground as a burning corpse.  
  
By the time I walked up to him, Freddy's body was reconstituting. "You think that's scary?", he demanded, shaken but recovering.  
  
"Oh, that's just the mild one," I replied. I reached into my pocket. "Here, you'll need this." I threw something at him.  
  
Freddy's none-gloved hand caught it (of course). He held it up. "A marker?", he asked.  
  
Marks appeared on his hand. He looked around, bewildered, wondering why every time he looked he saw more of the marks on his flesh.  
  
"They're called the Silence," I said, watching as half a dozen of those dark-suited creatures surrounded him. "Auto-hypnotic suggestion. Once you break eye contact, you forget they existed."  
  
Freddy kept whirling around, marking himself and then looking in confusion at the marks.  
  
"Oh, one last thing," I hastened to add. "They can be quite shocking in other ways too."  
  
On cue, the Silence all summoned their electrical power. Surges of energy enveloped Freddy and blew him apart.  
  
He reconstituted, of course. This time I gave him no chance to respond. As soon as he was a solid body. He was grabbed and hauled to his feet by Borg drones. I stood there and watched for a moment. "Nah, not enough of a nightmare." I snapped my fingers. "There."  
  
" _Subject will be taken for upgrade_ ," the Cyberman holding his right arm intoned.  
  
Freddy tried to resist. But he could not. The Cybermen hauled him to a cyber conversion chamber that sort of appeared nearby. Dream world and all. His screams were loud and clear as he was forced in and underwent cyber-conversion. Body chopped up and mostly discarded, as was the usual for Cybermen. He tromped out the other end as a Cyberman. " _What have you done to me?_ ", he demanded in their mechanical voice.  
  
"Cyber-conversion," I replied. "Nasty stuff, eh? Had a lot of nightmares about that one. But let's continue!" I snapped my fingers. The Cyberman body fell away from him in chunks and Freddy was whole underneath. Around us the sky darkened. "Be careful with this one."  
  
"What are you..." Freddy turned and found himself facing a statue. A statue of an angel to be precise. "Statues?! You think there's something frightening about..."  
  
"You might want to look around."  
  
He was already doing so. He was now surrounded by statues.  
  
And when he looked back to the first, it was no longer covering its eyes. And it was closer to him.  
  
"Weeping Angels," I announced. "They move when you're not keeping eye contact with them. And even if you are, you can't look them in the eye, otherwise the image imprint gets into your head and, well, any image of an Angel _becomes_ an Angel." I winked at him. "Try not to blink. You'll last longer."  
  
He kept spinning around, frantically trying to find room to escape, but every turned back brought the Angels closer to him. Now they were in full frightening mode. Fangs and teeth out and showing. Clawed hands raised.  
  
"Normally they just touch you and send you into the past. They feed off the time you had taken from you," I continued. "But let's face it. Look at them. They're coming up on your back whenever you're not looking. And with those claws and teeth... not hard to imagine they're going to do something worse than displace you temporally, isn't it? No, the way it looks, they're going to rip you to pieces."  
  
"What? No! No, get away! Get..."  
  
The first Angel took hold of Freddy. And then the whole lot.  
  
And they ripped him to bloody shreds.  
  
  
  
  
"Yikes," Molly said. "Those things sound _scary_. I'm glad it wasn't them in Undertown."  
  
"Yes. They're quite frightening," Liara agreed.  
  
"Sounds like another story," Murphy said.  
  
"But only after this one," Molly insisted. She looked to me as I finished a swig of ale. "So, what happened next?!"  
  
  
  
  
I was standing near Freddy when he reconstituted again. He looked rather different now. More aware, perhaps, of what he had stumbled into when he attacked me.  
  
But I wasn't done with him. Not by a long shot.  
  
" _Exterminate!_ "  
  
With that cry, the Daleks showed up.  
  
Freddy stared at them in disbelief for a moment before he turned to run. Of course, that just encourages Daleks to go faster, screaming " _Exterminate!_ " over and over.  
  
"Might want to run faster," I called out to him. "Because the Daleks _don't stop_. They want you dead, Freddy Krueger! They want you dead because you're not a Dalek!"  
  
" _EXTERMINATE!_ "  
  
He ran. He ran across the endless meadow to get away from the armored tin cans. But he couldn't get away. Shots landed around him, over and over, until one landed. His body lit up with the skeleton inside visible and he fell over.  
  
I walked up to him, slowly and methodically. He started to move as I stood over him. "Well, had enough yet?"  
  
He swiped at me with his gloved hand. But I saw it coming, and it was a lazy swipe as it was, so I easily stepped away from it. "Ah, some fight still in you, eh?"  
  
"I am the one who controls this world!", Freddy screamed at me. "Me! Not you! You're not more powerful than me!"  
  
I shook my head. "Why don't you see my last one before you judge, hrm? Because all of those? Those weren't my _worst_ nightmare. No. This one is far worse. It makes me uncomfortable, so I was holding it back. But if you insist..."  
  
I snapped my fingers. And everything went dark. We were no longer in the meadow. We were somewhere else. Black. Dark. Foreboding. Pinpricks of light that were stars burning thousands of light years away appeared around us.  
  
Nearby was a solar system. Yellow sun like Earth's. Indeed, a planet like Earth's was there too.  
  
Or rather, what was left of it.  
  
And standing between us and that planet was a figure. The broken planet and the yellow sun beyond it framed the figure, who was looking toward them. Simply staring.  
  
He began to turn. The visage fit. Oh yes. Seeing that figure, framed by the broken planet, the burning star, it fit so well. It fit the madness in his eyes. The cold fury on his expression. He was a mad god of destruction surveying his handiwork.  
  
A mad god with my face.  
  
Freddy stared. "What the hell is this?!"  
  
"The Time Lord Triumphant," I murmured. "My worst nightmare. Not what might hurt me... but what I might have become."  
  
Triumphant took steady and confident strides towards us. He ignored me and went for Freddy. The demented monster, facing a bigger monster, tried to scramble away. But he couldn't. Not here. Not in my mind.  
  
Freddy howled as Triumphant grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up. "Your world would be a better place without monsters like you in it," he declared. Energy began to build around Triumphant.  
  
"No! _No!_ ," Freddy pleaded.  
  
But those pleas fell on deaf ears. Triumphant would not, _could_ not, be swayed to mercy. In here, in my mind, he had the power in my nightmares, and Freddy Krueger could not withstand that power.  
  
He was fueled by Human nightmares and he could be fought in them. But this place was different. He couldn't handle Time Lord nightmares.  
  
I watched as the master of nightmares was annihilated by my own worst nightmare.  
  
And then I woke up.  
  
  
  
  
"The end," I said.  
  
Everyone stared at me. "What?", Harry asked. "That's it?"  
  
I blinked. "Huh?"  
  
"You didn't even name the girl!", Harry pointed out. "Or her parents. You... you skipped all the vital details that make a story work and just focused on you and Freddy. Christ, there are extras in movies who get more respect than that."  
  
"I think Harry's right," Murphy said. "You should work on that."  
  
"But... but the family was just... I mean, they didn't participate at all."  
  
"Yeah, but they're still part of the story," Harry pointed out. "Right ladies?"  
  
"He has a point," Liara agreed. "It wouldn't be fair if I told stories about fighting the Reapers and left out Engineer Adams and Doctor Chakwas, for instance."  
  
"You... oi." I took the last drink of ale from my bottle. "I need more ale."  
  
Harry checked the clock on the wall. "Just an hour from last call. We should probably be heading home."  
  
"Come on, boss," Molly pleaded. "One more story. There's got to be other cool things you've run into, Doctor."  
  
"Well, yes," I answered. "For instance, when I was investigating a dimensional disturbance some time back - when Katherine was off doing social work - I stumbled upon another transdimensional traveler. He was a clever fellow, lacking in social graces at times, but brilliant. And he had a most intriguing genetic abnormality, with a sixth finger on each hand." I held up the empty bottle. "And if you would be so kind, Molly, as to get my refill, I will tell you about my adventure with Dr. Stanford Pines most happily."  
  
Molly jumped up to do so. "I'll take one too, Grasshopper!", Harry called out.  
  
"Me three," Murphy agreed.  
  
"I'm done," Katara insisted.  
  
"I'll take another!", Liara called out.  
  
"I'm not a waitress!", Molly protested.  
  
Not that it availed them. Mac, as it turns out, has a Thing against people not getting up to get their own orders. And so we all had to get our next round of bottles.  
  
And the night continued on in its final hour. Don't have anything to say beyond that, I suppose.

**Author's Note:**

> This was me responding to someone wanting to know more about a line I dropped in Episode 27 "A Case of Concern" about the SIDoctor dealing with Freddy.
> 
> Plus I threw the Gravity Falls fans a small bone.


End file.
